I wonder, could you manufacture that? It seems to be happening in e.g. the middle east where they conjure up a city in the middle of the desert and just... create demand for a city there.

Take SF, which has a lot of tech jobs that aren't tied to any geographical location. Build a new city, offices, a university, loads of housing and make that the tech / internet capital of the world.

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AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Could you manufacture that for like a trillion dollars? Maybe, but there are better things to spend a trillion dollars on. That's the entire Medicare budget.

Could you manufacture that for like a billion dollars? No.

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sokoloff an hour ago | parent [-]

That’s the Medicare budget for one year. Cities have a useful life span measured in multiple centuries.

(I also think it’s impractical to pull off, with Las Vegas being perhaps the most recent long-term conjuring of a city from “not much”, but comparing a multi-century stream of value to an annual consumption budget line seems like a strange way to make your case.)

	▲	AnthonyMouse 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You'd have to spend that amount of money in one year (or thereabouts) in order to make it work. It's also not really creating much new value so much as moving it around.